As You Are
by SkyeZ
Summary: -She could feel her anger, her frustration, and her sorrow, building up and leaking out at Usagi. "I'm tired of looking after your mess and your childish antics grow old. Grow up!"-


**This was for a contest that I entered to help me get back into the grove of writing.**

**I'm sorry to all my fans for the long delay, please bare with me as I get back into it and hopefully upload soon and maybe even better (ha, maybe)**

**I'm glad to all my fans who write me still! Thank you! You've encouraged this writing so much!**

**Tell me what you think of this little story! I'm sending into contest soon :)**

**Please read and review**

**Do NOT own Sailor Moon**

**XXXXX**

As You Are

"Usagi!" Ami scolded the blond as she was propelled down the familiar sidewalks closer toward the arcade. "You called me to help you study!"

Really, Ami should have guessed when she had crawled off the couch from her short nap, sluggish and depressed with a stuffy head, and over the line of the phone came her friends whining, sugary voice begging for help. Ami being who she was gave in to her bubbly friend half hoping that she really did want a cram study session before the finals. Her princess would need all the help she could get. Ami had allowed herself to be duped.

The blond laughed annoyingly, the harsh sound grating against the bluenettes stuffy ears. "Just a few games Ams! It's good to relax before cramming! Studying is bad for your health." She sounded so sure of that.

A small ding sounded as the doors parted to allow them in. "Usagi!" Ami attempted to scold again but her voice came out in a small tired sigh.

Her blond friend chose to ignore her and opted instead to wave at Motoki behind the counter. "Hey Motoki!" She giggled like a schoolgirl still in love with the idea of the young man while leading Ami towards the gently beeping Sailor V game.

Just below the surface Ami could feel her blood boil at Usagi's dismissive attitude began to overwhelm her normal calm demeanor. She was tired from long hours of volunteer work at the hospital and shadowing, she was mentally exhausted from school, cram school, and many books streaming with facts. She was emotionally drained by the death of a young boy from the hospital that she had befriended, he had died just the other day of cancer. Usagi just happened to have the luck to push all the wrong buttons today.

"You see," the bright girl chattered on, "Sailor V has a new level again. It would be really, really great if yo-"

"If I what!" Ami finally snapped, slapping her hand from Usagi's grasp.

The two girls stopped in the middle of the aisle only a game away from Sailor V. Her blond friend turned around perplexed and carefully asked, "Ami?"

"You are always doing this! You slack around, you're never serious, and then you come to me and expect me to baby you!" She could feel her anger, her frustration, and her sorrow, building up and leaking out at Usagi. "I'm tired of looking after your mess and your childish antics grow old. Grow up!"

Ami stooped over gasping for air while Usagi took a weary step back as if her friend would physically hurt her. The two stood there temporarily ignoring each other's existence while gathering their bearings. Usagi spoke first, in a quiet and trembling voice, while Ami desperately tried to curtail her anger.

"I- I'm sorry Ami." She whispered, a sad smile brushing her lips before it trembled away as if to hide. Her blue eyes misted over as they gazed at the tiled floor. "I really should have doubled checked and all…"

"Oh…" Ami started forward, a guilty frown marring her features. She gasped sadly, feeling her own eyes mist over, when the blond took another step back.

"I- uh, I have to go." Before the bluenette could get in another word, Usagi bolted on her speedy legs out the arcade doors. Although Ami couldn't see her, she knew by the stumbling speed and through instinct that her princess and best friend was crying and would be a sobbing mess by the time she reached the sanctity of her room.

With a groan Ami flung herself down on one of the stools, slamming her head into her hands self loathingly. What had she done? Usagi never meant any harm by her oblivious nature, and Ami has taken her anger out on such a simple girl.

Beep.

"What?" The noise jerked her back into reality.

Beep. Beep. Beeerrr.

Turning around, Ami was shocked to see she had flung herself down at the Sailor V game, and it was glitching.

Zzzzsshhhch.

"Aw, shut it." She mumbled angrily, letting her recent frustration out on the inanimate game.

Beep. Beeezzch. Zzzssch.

With a sigh, Ami bent down to press the open code. If Sailor V was shorting out, it could reveal the Sailor Scouts hidden base to Motoki or to someone else who would investigate more thoroughly. Although, she admitted to herself, that she would feel a little better after fixing something that didn't have any feelings or connections besides a wire to a wire. Something simpler than even her princess was.

"Help." A whispered voice came through the static.

"What?" Ami jerked her head up.

"H-zzzsscp." It broke out. She stared at the screen blinking white and Sailor V whose pixelated form seemed to be in dire distress. Her hand found its way to the static screen.

"Wha-"

The world fizzled out in a crash of white noise that rushed past her and through her. She fell. Her feet left the ground and hands through the glass screen. She felt tilted around reminding her of the first dizzy time she had ridden a rollercoaster, except instead of one stomach churning turn, it never stopped spinning and growing darker.

Then she woke up to familiar blue staring intently at her.

Ami stepped back with a gasp, disorientated about her enclosed surroundings. "Usagi!" She called out, reaching dizzily out to her friend only to find her hand blocked by glass. "Hu?"

Shaking her head clear Ami took a few seconds to get her bearings before turning back to study Usagi, who didn't seem to hear her at all. In fact, the blond had a familiar game face on, tongue poking out the side of her mouth curling ever so slightly around pink lips and blue eyes dark with focused energy. However, the happy absent minded smile and energetic yelling was gone and there were dark little smudges under her eyes from lack of sleep, and her hair was a long tangled mess around her head.

"Usagi?" Ami was startled by the voice of Ikuko, Usagi's kind mother, speaking out behind the blond. Ikuko was always a kind and gentle mother with a bit of a fierce temper when it came to Usagi's and Shingo's grades. Ami was a little shocked to hear the woman's voice come out heavy and strained, burdened by an indescribable fate.

Ami's vision filled suddenly with the sight of Usagi's room as the girl stood. More surprises were thrown at Ami when she saw the dark sweatpants and sweater on the pale, thin form of her friend. The room that Ami could see between Usagi's slightly parted legs was strewn, not in its normal cuddly bunnies and mess, but instead scattered with small thin cases organized in piles by color, some had a blue lining, others green, and others gray. Other than that, the room was bare, dull, and even dim.

Ikuko, who had stepped into the doorway looked older, her blue hair lined with gray and crows feet tipping at her bruised looking eyes. Her smile however was the same, bright and hopeful, full of love for the subdued daughter before her.

"Why don't you put down the game dear, come have dinner with us?"

Usagi's long and untamed hair shook violently back and forth. Ikuko sighed and her smile dropped, with a saddened posture, she ventured a timid question to her daughter. "Will you at least pause the game and let me eat up here with you?"

For a moment, Usagi hesitated before slowly she bobbed her head up and down in consent. Ikuko's smile brightened and she turned back out into the hallway. Ami was confused about the events that transpired before her, she couldn't even began to understand the events that led to a silent Usagi and a mother aging to fast.

"You see her?" A distant voice sounded out from the blank space behind her. With an 'eep' Ami jerked around shocked to find a bad rubbed out pixilated version of Sailor Pluto.

"Sailor Pluto!" She called, shoulders sagging in relief. "Sailor Pluto, can you tell me what's going on?"

"A scenario." She answered emotionlessly, a blocky pixelated hand waving in the direction of Usagi. Ami turned around and watched as the blond fell down onto the bed with a plop. Her hand snaked underneath an almost sickeningly sweet pink and white pillow, pulling out a single picture frame.

"Hu?" Ami wasn't really expecting that answer. She was rather hoping Sailor Pluto would be more serious about the situation. "A scenario?"

"While your souls were waiting to be reborn, I wanted to find a time that would best accept you all and all you were, personalities, weakness, likes, passions, powers." Her 2D design gazed out sadly. On the other side of the glass wall, Usagi stood up from the bed and slumped back over towards them, bending down she reached out somewhere while her face came into focus. Her blue eyes were blank and she seemed so lonely that Ami wanted to cry for her.

"It is the year 2013," Sailor Pluto continued, "Here, all her gaming and manga wants could be fed continuously." The girl before them held up a circular disk that read Assassins Creed III and she reached out for the case to put it in. "However, here in Japan, otakus such as her are ridiculed and picked on by those more focused on reality, which we both know our princess usually is not. Where you live, she can't spend all her time at the arcade easily and her parents refuse to buy her all the games that she can play at home, and even if she reads mostly manga, it is simply a small quirk. Your time is the time for nerds, this time is the time of geeks."

"Sailor P?" Ami asked fearfully, "Why are you showing me this?"

"I am simply showing a world where Usagi has been denied the friendship she needs, where you weaken in your resolve so much, that it harms her."

Ami was aghast that Sailor P would ever _think_ that she would abandon Usagi. However, the woman gave an all-knowing smile, or as least as much as Ami could make through the pixilation.

"You question if you are a good friend to Usagi, or if she is good for your grades. Simple questions, normal questions, but I do know your personality, Sailor Mercury."

"What happened here?" Ami questioned, looking back out at the saddened Usagi who sat this time at the small coffee table in her room. She methodically cleared off the games to the side and stacked them up in piles.

"At first it was small things. School boys picking on her for being…" She paused in slight amusement, "preppy. Happy-go-lucky. Always eating. Loud. Always talking about the next game or manga coming out. It began to become something more than occasionally funny, it became freakish and obsessive. They started to exclude her, so she played more games and read more manga to pass the time and the kids teased her more, it became an escape instead of a slightly above passionate love. But she smiled and she laughed and it was only elementary boys, she also had all of you."

"Us?" Ami trained her eyes on this girl. Who laughed and talked and played who daydreamed and played to many games for health. That was Usagi, it had always been her, even as a princess.

"Yes, you all met each other early in life and you were her greatest strengths as always."

"Until…" Ami prodded wearily.

"Until," Sailor Pluto continued, gazing as Ikuko came back into the room with a cheery smile and placed a tray full of food on the table before seating beside her daughter to eat. "You all left her. Her bullies began to bully you all. You're grades went down, Minako lost popularity, Makoto was being ganged up on by the stronger boys, no one spoke to Rei, it was a bad situation for you all and in self-preservation, you all stopped talking to her. By the time middle school rolled around, she stopped talking, she lost hope. When she was fourteen, she stopped walking out of her room altogether."

"I wouldn't!" Ami protested. "I couldn't…" She flattered out, desperately trying to convince herself otherwise. Hadn't she been thinking just this morning, that without Usagi she would have one less worry on her plate? But she'd also be so lonely.

A firm hand landed on her shoulder, dragging away the sight of Usagi's mother holding her baby safely in her arms, as if to protect her from a world that had already gotten its hands on her.

"That was one of the lives I saw for her, and all of you. It'll fix itself later on, you will meet her again as a volunteer in the hospital a few days from this point in time, when she punched her hand through a wall. Her excuse, that Shingo broke her game. You find that broken girl, and your roles reverse. Instead of her saving you, you save her, in a much longer and painful process."

The white noise started to form beneath Ami's hands. "There are many different scenarios where the roles are reversed. This is one meant for you to see."

"A-are the others seeing something like this? Did…"

"Should they question why they love such an infuriating girl, then yes." Ami could feel the wise scouts breath near her ear. "Go apologize Ami, I'm sure she's waiting."

The darkness dissolved, the white noise pervaded her sight, and feeling left her. The alternate world of a distant future that never happened.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing before Usagi in a familiar messy room filled with stuffed toys and scattered clothes, posters of cartoon characters and one of Tuxedo Mask. It was her Usagi. The blond stood before her shocked into silence, whatever sobs that she may had been crying while running into her room stalled.

"Ami?" She chocked out. Said girl couldn't find the voice to talk, all her apologies running out the window as she stared open mouthed at her friend, soaking in this simple girl.

"Ami! I just wanted to say sorry!" Usagi yelled out at her. "I- I heard about what happened to the poor little boy," She started to sob, "and you looked so tired, I j-just wanted to help you and al-"

Usagi was cut off by Ami who latched herself onto the crying girl, sobbing herself as she too apologized. "I should have known Usagi. Really! I shouldn't have acted that way. I'm sorry. So sorry, you didn't do anything wrong."

"Usagi…" Ami whispered, sobbing into her clean blond hair.

"Y-yes?" Usagi squeezed her.

"You're fine the way you are."


End file.
